A new report by a prominent psychologist in the UK realistically addresses the …

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In 2007, the British Prime Minister commissioned an independent review of how parents and children are being affected by the rise of new technology, such as increased access to the Internet and gaming consoles. Dr. Tanya Byron, a psychologist with experience in child behavior, led the review, and spent several months exploring the research literature and meeting with parents, children, and industry leaders. The results of the work have now been released in a report that makes comprehensive recommendations regarding the role the government can play in helping parents make technology a safe and effective part of their child's development.

In places, the report is remarkably blunt in its analysis. Dr. Byron argues that unsupervised exploration and the pushing of boundaries are a natural and essential part of childhood. In her view, UK society has become increasingly risk-averse, which has resulted in parents that let kids explore the outdoors only through carefully supervised and structured activities. Left with few boundaries to push, children are turning to games and the Internet as the only locations they can undergo this form of development.

Byron suggests that parents should treat technology as they do more traditional areas of childhood development, and makes two informative comparisons: crossing the street and learning to swim. Each of these is associated with risks, but parents manage them in stages, with education, followed by supervised exploration that ultimately leads to allowing children to explore largely unsupervised. Technology largely presents a problem because it lacks the intuitive and widely understood aspects of education and risk. "There is a generational digital divide which means that parents do not necessarily feel equipped to help their children in this space," Byron writes, "which can lead to fear and a sense of helplessness."

Dr. Tanya Byron

The report contains extensive recommendations for eliminating the fear and helplessness aspects, divided between efforts targeted towards games and those focused on Internet use. In general, the recommendations focus on voluntary self-regulation by the relevant industries and educational programs that will help parents understand the challenges and benefits of the technology.

In terms of Internet use, Dr. Byron recommends pervasive access to parental control software. Retailers should provide this at the point of purchase, and ISPs should include the software as part of their service. Search companies should agree to provide a "safe search" option that's easily accessed from the main search portal, and can be locked in on a given machine. Content providers should also agree to strict takedown times for potentially harmful content. All of these efforts would be coordinated by a governmental council that works with the relevant industry groups. Byron avoids recommending any new laws, but suggests that the council be charged with evaluating existing laws to determine how they could be modernized or clarified to cope with technological advances.

The existing research on gaming and childhood development, in Byron's view, mostly indicates that factors beyond gaming content can be critical: "there is a strong body of ethnographic research which argues that context and the characteristics of each child will mediate the effects of playing video games." This, ultimately, means that parents should determine what gaming content is appropriate for their children. To make parents' job easier, the report calls for improvements in the existing game ratings system, along with improved enforcement of age limits.

Byron's report also places significant emphasis on education and the role of schools. It calls for teacher training and certification programs to include information on the safe use of technology, and to expand the educational material offered to include programs targeted at parents to help them understand how to monitor and assist their children.

Overall, the recommendations are refreshingly short on fear-mongering, and the report recognizes a number of things that many people seem reluctant to admit: each child is a unique, so one-size-fits-all rules are ineffective; parents need to educate themselves so that they can set intelligent limits; and risk can never be eliminated, so their role should include developing their child's resilience. Given these realities, its recommendations appear to appropriately focus on how the government and industry can work to make a parent's job easier.